Tested: Real world range my BE6 EV under different driving modes

Auto Regen is a mode that allows the car system to decide which level of regen to use real time.

BHPian kennethomas recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Testing my BE6 for city efficiency.

Some points to note here:

1. This was in Bangalore, where we spend more time in traffic per day than doing something productive
2. I traveled the same route almost everyday. Deviations were very minimal but neglible.
3. It was only me in the car at all times. No other person and change of load. AC was on Driver only mode. Was on the drive back but not during the drive to office.
4. Weather in Bangalore was the same throughout the testing so ambient temperature impact on the car was quite low
5. I did this by resetting my Trip at the beginning of the day and taking a picture when of it when I was done for the day
6. I don’t do Home to Office and Office to Home trips. My day usually has Office, Home and a couple standard stops everyday. Which is good because you get more accurate data from more realistic human nature trips is my theory. Its not the usual test where you go on a track, select a mode 5 different times and make observations. Nothing against it, just this is more realistic is my opinion.

I wanted to do this from a very long time but always lacked the motivation or simply forgot to change modes when I started driving. This time I ensured it had a 100% pass rate so I could do these runs.

I was also nearing the end of a charging cycle and I needed to bring down the charge to under 5% on recommendation from my BEV owners’ club [whoop whoop] having not let it drop under 12% before

Day 1 – Monday – One Pedal Mode – Power Saving Mode

It was a disaster. This was the day 1 of bike taxis ban so it was an absolute traffic nightmare. My testing was not off to a good start. But I stuck to it.

What you can see here is:

Decent distance of 27 kms which I didn’t know I do everyday

I was stuck for 2 hours on the road for just one way so not surprising to see the time here.

But the average speed is a good indicator of how I was just standing still for a very long period of time

Honestly the efficiency of 6.6kms/kwh was so surprising though. I thought standing the vehicle with the AC for a long time would definitely eat into the range, but it didn’t!

Day 2 – Tuesday – Auto Regen* – Power Saving mode

Like I said, I needed to charge my car soon so stuck to Power Saving Mode but decided to use Auto Regen. Start of my day had shown me around 50kms range so I wasn’t worried at all about running out.

Thankfully it had a normal traffic which meant it was going to take me 50 minutes to reach my office which was 8kms away. Nope, I did not miss a 0 there.

As you can see, because I’m driving relatively more and power saving mode was On throughout, the efficiency goes upto 8.3km/kwh. The time driven is reasonable what my daily commuting is like. What also helped a lot here was the traffic being absolutely normal as it should. Spoiler Alert: This was the highest efficiency I got during my drive.

Day 3 – Wednesday – L1 Regen – Default

So. You’ve woken up on Monday and decided not to go to office. You eventually get yourself out of bed on Tuesday and go to office to at least have 1 of the 3 mandatory in office days. But Wednesdays. Wednesdays are when all HRs and Managers have decided they will have in person callibrations and meetings. So every tom dick and harry and their second cousin twice removed is on the road. Absolute nightmare of a morning even when I’ve left at 7.45am to ensure I beat traffic. I hate going out on Wednesdays

I had forgotten to put the car for charge and by the time I remembered I could charge it only to 80%.

Efficiency as expected drops because default mode + only L1 regen mode. There’s so much potential regen that is wasted on this run because I’ve decided to keep it on L1.

Efficiency is just above 6.1km/kwh. This also increased above 6 because I was standstill at a signal for about 10mins due to a problem.
I’d taken a slightly different route but the same traffic principles applied.

Day 4 – Thursday – L1 – Everyday Mode

Everyday Mode used to be my favourite. Simply because the suspension used to turn to buttery smooth and comfort mode was a go! Ever since that Carplay update was added to my car, because I went in for my first service, that’s all gone. I don’t even use Apple. So loss-loss overall.

There was normal amount of traffic i.e. 50mins for 8kms kinda traffic i.e. finish a fifth of your audiobook in one day kinda traffic. This meant Everyday mode should have normally taken more power but because the suspensions are now the same as default. So you’ll see the suspension being close to what a everyday run should look like. 6.6 for the most normal day possible. That’s basically the benchmark now.

Day 5 – Friday – One Pedal Mode – Default

So on Friyay, my WFO was about to end but I was really thrilled that I was able to complete my test on Take 3. It was what Friday traffic is like. Mornings are a breeze and evenings are dull because everyone is trying to leave the city for the weekend. I also traveled a bit more on this day because of a detour I had to make

So what you see here is what the most preferred way of driving is supposed to look like, for someone who commutes within the city, in Bangalore and other high density areas. The efficiency was between 6.2 and 7.2 throughout the day. One of the stops in between was for about 3kms and it gave me an efficiency of 11km/kwh. This happens time to time with me.

It gave me a efficiency of 6.4 which I don’t mind. Traffic was smooth throughout but expected amount. But that brought my testing to the end. So here I go with my observations.

Final Observations

1. Power Saving mode is built very well. As our friend Anuj on XEV9 thread keps praising it rightly, the Power Saving mode is enough for your daily use. Even on highways. Built really well when you don’t plan on going fast and with people.
2. Default mode is not my favourite modes at all. Actually it might just be my least favourite mode. What we need is a custom mode and default will probably die because nobody will use it is my guess. At least not us EV heads.
3. When in city, and when you’re in choked traffic which needs quick bursts of pick up but also immediate braking, the One Pedal Mode is basically the most convenient and efficient way to go about. OPD reduces the time you’d take to swap between brake and the accelerator pedal and vice versa making you really quick on the road. Did I mention its super convenient. Takes the stress away.
4. Bring back Everyday mode Suspension Settings Mahindra. PLEASE!
5. All in all, love this car! It has made my commuting to an absolute nightmare to something I can actually tolerate now because I’m sitting in a comfy cabin not having to worry too much.

* Auto Regen is a mode that allows the car system to decide which level of regen to use real time based on the traffic in front of you. So it can vary regen from 3 in heavy traffic to coasting when there’s no cars in front of you. Very useful on highway runs, especially the bad highways. Huge fan of this mode and designed beautifully whoever did it.

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